Another view on Eminent Domain

This article, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune is reprinted without their permission. (if you're with the Star Tribune, please take it easy, I'm just wanting to share a little of your wisdom.)

I think this editorial makes sense. And maybe, just maybe, if we had heard all the aurguments before the Supreme Court, we would feel differently than we do about Eminent Domain.

Before swallowing whole the notion that government's power of eminent domain should be severely restricted, Minnesota legislators should look soberlyat the potential consequences.

Do they really want to dissuade the revival of older communities; to further starve older tax bases (and school systems); to further concentrate poverty, and to encourage urban sprawl and its expensive byproducts -- traffic congestion, environmental degradation, energy waste and higher infrastructure costs?

If not, they should consider cooler, more balanced reforms than those sought by a nationwide libertarian blitz against last year's Supreme Court ruling in the Connecticut property rights case, Kelo vs. New London. Yes, some local governments have bullied property owners into condemnation proceedings to advance private development projects. But that's rare in Minnesota. The bipartisan bill offered at the behest of a Washington-based property-rights group and Minnesota's auto dealers' association uses a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Property owners deserve fairer compensation, and should get it. But removing local government's last-ditch tool for
redevelopment goes too far.

Are the people of St. Louis Park better off because of the Excelsior and Grand project? Have people in southwest Minneapolis benefited from 50th and France? Is Richfield better off with a Best Buy headquarters than a car dealership? Has the whole metro region benefited? We think it has, even though these cities used eminent domain (or its leverage) in each case.

Drawing a sharp line between public purpose and private gain is all but impossible. There's potential for private gain in every public action. Critics don't complain about condemning property for roads and other public projects. Yet roads spawn enormous private benefit. Just look at what's built beside them. It's especially ironic that roadside auto dealers should complain about government's authority to, as a last resort, condemn one private property for another. No corporate interest has gained more from eminent domain than the auto industry.

Some reforms are needed, but proposed changes in the blight and environmental standards go too far. The greatest danger isn't that urban development would stop entirely, but that a developer who discovers one reluctant seller would simply decide that business is easier on the metro fringe, where taxpayers will be left with the costs of redundant infrastructure and the consequences of urban neglect.

These arguments may well fail, not because they are wrong but because they are complex. The libertarian lobbies have both momentum and emotion on their side. They use fear to portray property owners as helpless victims of predatory governments eager to condemn their homes solely to reward rich developers. It's the kind of demagoguery that works at election time.

If legislators are, however, truly interested in the public good, they will carefully examine the proposed changes, consider the consequences and find a fair balance between the interests of private property and community.

I tend to better understand the need for eminent domain. In fact, I've never been against it. I do think, in some situations, it can be abused. But so can every other power a governement has.

AJ